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Social Neuroscience
INSTRUCTORS: Kevin Ochsner & Jennifer Beer
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Kevin Ochsner |
Jennifer Beer |
This course is designed to acquaint students with the Social Neuroscience approach and current research findings in this field. Introductory sessions will include hands-on instruction in neuroanatomy and neuroscience methodology. Later sessions will feature discussions focused on particular social phenomena. Discussion goals will include
(a) evaluating the utility of current social neuroscience research examining each phenomenon and
(b) considering future experimental designs using the Social Neuroscience approach that could further inform our understanding of each phenomenon.
Selection of the specific Social phenomena will be shaped by the interests of course participants, but may include the self, perception of others, emotion, emotion regulation and emotion <-> cognition interactions, social rejection, moral emotions and decision-making.
Kevin Ochsner received his bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his Masters degree and Ph.D. in psychology from Harvard University. He has also received postdoctoral training in social psychology at Harvard and functional neuroimaging at Stanford University. He currently is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Columbia University. Kevin's research interests include the psychological and neural processes involved in emotion, pain, self-regulation, self perception, and person perception. All of his work employs a social cognitive neuroscience approach that seeks to integrate the theories and methods of social psychology on the one hand, and cognitive neuroscience on the other.
Jennifer Beer is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Core Faculty member of the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis. She received her PhD in Psychology (2002) and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research adopts lesion and fMRI methodologies to examine self-regulation of social behavior. Dr. Beer is serving as a 2006-2007 Harrington Faculty Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin.